June 30, 2024 • 49 mins
A man dies in a U.S. immigration detention center, under unusual circumstances. He is found unresponsive in his cell, with a sock stuffed down his throat. His death is ruled a suicide, but little information is put out about what happened, and the family wants answers. In this first part of a special two-part series, Latino USA investigates why José de Jesús died in the custody of the U.S. government, and what his death tells us about conditions—especially mental health services—inside the immigration detention system.
This story originally aired in July of 2016.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Marlon Bishop co CEO at Futuro Media and
back in the day, one of the producers of the
immigration story we have for you next. Last week on
Latino USA, we brought you an important story about an
unprecedented crisis in Sasabe, a remote town on the Arizona
border with Mexico, where two wings of the Sina Loa
cartel battle over a crossing point to smuggle migrants into
(00:24):
the US. The violence has turned the small community into
a ghost town. This and the fact that through June
ten people have died in iced attention in fiscal year
twenty twenty four. That's double the number of deaths reported
in all of fiscal year twenty twenty three, and triple
the amount reported in all of fiscal year twenty twenty two.
(00:46):
So within that context, we felt that it was important
to bring to you again the strange death of Jose
de Jssus. It is a two part special that originally
aired in twenty sixteen about the conditions, especially involving mental health,
inside the immigration detention system. The story would go on
to earn Latino USA the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
(01:08):
Here is part one of the strange death of Jose
de Jessus.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Before we start, dear listener, a quick warning. This episode
describes suicide in graphic language. On May thirteenth, twenty fifteen,
Jose DeJesus de Nissagun had a birthday party. It was small,
just his parents and some family and friends. They celebrated
(01:34):
on the back patio of their modest home on an
isolated stretch of coast in Central Mexico. Jose Dejsus was
turning thirty one years old. They were celebrating a birthday,
but they were also saying goodbye. The day after the party,
Jose would take a plane and a bus to the
(01:55):
Mexican border and then attempt to cross the desert into
the United States. His goal was to reunite with his
three young children, who lived in Las Vegas with their mother.
Jose missed them terribly and for years he had dreamed
of being near them again. But just seven days after
his party, Jose was dead in a US immigration detention center.
(02:18):
It was a suicide, a suicide by asphyxiation, to be
more precise. During the autopsy, the medical examiner found lodged
deep in Jose's throat a bunched up orange sock. Jose
had been in the Elloyd Detention Center in Arizona for
(02:40):
just three days. He didn't have a history of mental illness,
according to his family, and he was coming to the
US with a purpose to be with his kids.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
So what happened?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Romedia and PRX It's Latino USA. I'm Marieno Rossac Today,
Episode one of a two part special investigation. We look
into one man's death and what it tells us about
the unseen world of immigrant detention in the United States.
(03:23):
Over the course of almost a year, from twenty fifteen
through twenty sixteen, producers Marlon Bishop, Fernando Charvari and I
reported on the circumstances around Jose de Jsus's unusual death,
and you'll be hearing the three of us narrating this story.
We took trips all over the country and in Mexico,
(03:44):
conducted dozens of interviews, and poured through government documents in
an attempt to understand just what happened to Jose Dejsus.
It was quite a different time in our country. President
Obama was still in the White House and there was
far less national media attention on immigration and the detention system.
(04:05):
But what we uncovered about how detention works and why
migrants are dying in detention is more relevant now than ever.
So we're going to bring back our two part radio
documentary aired in twenty sixteen. It's the story of the
life and death of one immigrant detainee, and we're asking
(04:26):
the questions, why did Jose Dejsues die in custody of
the United States in such a strange way and what
does his death tell us about conditions inside immigration detention facilities.
We first heard about this story in twenty fifteen while
(04:47):
Marlon and I were on a reporting trip in Phoenix, Arizona.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Head west on West Elm Street toward North Nineteenth Avenue,
then turn right onto a North nineteenth Avenue.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
It was the height of summer.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Is what is the temper you're reading right now on.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
It says one oh five on the car. If we're
to believe it, that's pretty high.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
We've been in touch with an immigrant advocacy group called
PINE and they invited us to their office.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
They invited us because something weird was going on and
it had to do with Jose.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
We started getting letters from the Eloid Detention Center, anonymous letters.
People are obviously scared.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
This is Francisca Barcas. She's the organizing director at Bwinde.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
It literally happened right after his death. Right after his
death was on May twentieth, and probably early June is
when we started getting letters and then we were like, okay,
something's gonna like something's happening.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Puente is one of the main groups in the area
that helps immigrants and detention get legal representation so people
on the inside not to contact them when something comes up.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
And for a little context, the people inside detention range
from those who were caught crossing the border recently to
people who have been living in the US for decades
and maybe their immigration status came up during a traffic
stop or a workplace. Right the people that are in
detention are either waiting to be deported or they're waiting
for a court date to find out if they can
(06:12):
stay one.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
They gets letters from the tainees all the time, but
they had never received so many letters before. Dozens. They
were filled with accounts of Jose's death.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Do you have the letters here?
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Let me look at my desk quickly.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
That's a lot of letters.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So this is May twenty six.
Speaker 6 (06:28):
Here, Hosa Sagon got thrown into a cell and a
building Bravo six hundred like an animal. They ripped his
clothes off, did not give him a mattress until around
ten pm. All he was asking was a phone call
to his family or lawyer, which never happened. He was ignored,
(06:49):
like if he wasn't even there. He was so stressed
and desperate at that point.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So he continued saying he was so streed and desperate
at that point that it pushed him to commit suicide.
I believe Jose Sai Wound's death could have been prevented,
just like other previous deaths that Alloyd Detention Center has had.
In other letters, several detainees wrote that they heard screaming
coming from hose cell and believed he was beaten up
(07:18):
by guards. One wrote that Jose was tasered in pepper sprayed,
but all of them suggested that he was mistreated in detention.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It's hard to know for sure which, if any, of
the accounts were first hand and which were rumors to
kind that fly through the detention center when big things happen,
but it was clear that detainees at Eloy were upset
and freaked out because nobody at the detention center was
telling them what was going on.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Then a week later, some detainees said they went on
a hunger strike to protest the conditions inside Eloy and
to protest Jose's death.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
All of it was a sign that people inside the
detention center wanted to be heard.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
These letters get opened before we get them, and so
that's how we know there's a serious case here to investigate.
If people are both putting themselves out there and putting
their bodies on the line through a hunger strike, so
I want there to be a real investigation.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
People outside the detention center were also talking about the
unusual way that Jose had died. One Democratic Congressman from
Tucson even called for the US Department of Justice to
investigate his death while activists protested.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Recent detainees deaths.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
The men started the hunger strike this morning.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Then protesters say they were kept outside in the heat
by doors.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
As retaliation, But at the time ICE officials weren't saying much.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It's the government
agency that is charged with detaining and deporting immigrants. And
remember that acronym because it's going to come up a
lot during this episode.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
All they had said was that a man died inside
the Eloid Detention Center because of unknown causes. Then weeks later,
ICE released another statement saying that a medical examiner ruled
Jose's death a suicide.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Hither for an interview with doctor Tess. A month and
a half after Hose's death, I visited doctor Gregory Hess.
He's the medical examiner from Pema County, Arizona, who performed
the autopsy and reviewed Hosse's file from when he was detained.
Speaker 7 (09:19):
He was having what they were describing as delusional thoughts,
so he was trying to bang his head against the wall,
saying people were going to kill him. I'm just kind
of bizarre behavior. And he was seen by a psychologist
at that facility who put him on a constant suicide
watch for about a day.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
This was just the second day Josse was in the
detention center. He was locked up in a room alone
with a guard watching him at all times. On the
third day, the day he died, he was no longer
on suicide watch and was under far less supervision.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
Doctor Hes, by the way, works for the county. He's
not connected to ICE or to the private company that
runs the Eloid Detention Center.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Doctor Hess found a few things during the autopsy. He
discovered what the autopsy report called, quote blunt force injuries
to the head. He says he doesn't know when those injuries.
Speaker 7 (10:09):
Occurred, whether it was during his episode of bizarre behavior,
whether or not he was being restrained by corrections officials,
whether or not he received that somehow crossing the border
in the first place.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
But he says it wasn't serious, essentially a bruise or
a bump.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
On the head.
Speaker 7 (10:23):
It doesn't have anything to do with his death.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
It's worth noting that doctor Hes also read in Jose's
file that he was quote restrained by guards, which could
mean anything from being handcuffed to a more intense physical encounter.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Doctor has also found a white plastic candle about four
inches long inside Hosse's stomach. It appeared to be part
of a toothbrush.
Speaker 7 (10:46):
In my opinion, he probably consumed that toothbrush prior to
the sock, with the thought that if I consume this
it will it may kill me.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Last, and most importantly, he found the sock, a bright orange,
knee high thick prison sock.
Speaker 7 (11:01):
The sock was bunched up, but essentially it was molded
into the esophagus, so imagine he had to work to
make that happen a little bit. So essentially that sock
was was distending and impacted within the esophagus. The most
of the sock was including the entrance to the trichea,
so basically what that is is choking.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
The autopsy found there were no drugs in Hose's system,
nor any other medical problems that could have led to
his death, and so after looking at the evidence, doctor
Hess certified Jose's death a suicide by asphyxiation with a sock.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
And for many people we spoke to in the immigrant
advocacy community and detainees at ELOI, the sock was suspicious
a part of the story that didn't add up to
them because it's hard to imagine that anybody could die
that way.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Doctor Hess has never seen a case like this before,
but he cautioned against thinking it's impossible.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
It's difficult to look at people that commit suicide after
the fact and then rationalize actions. Why would they not
hang themselves and stead, you know, I have no idea.
Oftentimes suicides are people that aren't thinking clearly because they
have depression, they have psychiatric illness. They may be on substances.
I have no idea what this individual's past medical history was,
(12:21):
but I'm sure being apprehended and thrown into a facility
can be stressing, and maybe that's the way he reacted.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Is there any medical possibility that this man was murdered. No,
So what we know so far is that the medical
evidence shows that Hose the Hissus died by suicide after
(12:50):
choking on a knisak. But we still had other questions.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
How could this happen just three days after entering the
eloid Detention Center and who Jose the Hissus. To answer
that question, we had to meet the Denis Sagoon family.
Stay with us Notes, Welcome back to this special edition
(13:20):
of Latino USA. I'm Marie no Josa with producers Fernando
Charari and Marlon Bishop.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Okay, I'm recording. Where are we?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
We are in a cab now. We just landed in
Las Vegas and we're on our way to meet the
family of Jose de Jesus Sagoon that has agreed to
speak with us. And for me, honestly, it's a very
it's a it's an uncomfortable feeling. I am it's going
to be really hard.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I mean, I would hate to think, like if my son,
if something happened to my son in a foreign country,
that then I'd have to come back and try to
piece it together. About a month and a half after
the death of Osse the Hissus, we visited Las Vegas,
where his brother and sister live. His parents, who live
in Mexico, had flown up to Vegas to spend some
time with the family after the tragedy.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Our taxi pulls into a brand new looking suburban subdivision
and we get out at a handsome ranch house. You ready.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Jose's brother Gabriel opens the door and invites us in.
The family is seated at the kitchen table eating takeout.
We're greeted by Jose's father, Silberio, a man with sad
eyes and a big silver mustache.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
He says the pain they're feeling is deep, and over
the course of several hours, the family shares Jose's story.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Silberio and his wife Elisa, manage a small hotel on
the coast of Mexico, and their kids grew up on
the grounds. Jose was the second oldest. His nickname in
the family was Pecoso because of his freckles.
Speaker 8 (15:00):
He was the kind of brother that he used to
protect us from everything or anything.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
Gabriel is five years younger than Jose, and he looked
up to his big brother.
Speaker 8 (15:12):
He was kind, he have a good heart, and he
was brave on his life.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
When Jose de Hesus turned nineteen, like many young men
from his little town, he decided to try his luck
in the US. He came without papers and found work
as a plumber here in Las Vegas.
Speaker 8 (15:27):
He wish he can be born in this country. He
always used to say that I want to be American.
I don't know why I am not born in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Josse met a woman here and they had three kids.
But seven years after Jose arrived in the States, his father,
sid Video, became very sick with a heart condition. They
weren't sure if he would live much longer, and Jose
returned to Mexico so they could spend some time together.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
His girlfriend and kids came with him to Mexico. There
they got married, but the relationship soured quickly, so his
wife and kids went back to Vegas. They had legal
status in the US, but Jose.
Speaker 8 (16:00):
Did it my brother was stuck in Mexico, always trying
to come back.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
To fly for his kids.
Speaker 8 (16:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
For five years, Jose lived with his parents in Mexico,
doing odd jobs to help his dad and dreaming of
reuniting with his kids. By that point, his brother and
sister had moved to the US. He missed them a
lot too. The siblings stayed in touch on Facebook sharing photos.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
These are great photographs. So this is a photograph of
Josejess who's doing a headstand on the with the ocean
right next to him, and his little boy doing a
headstand right next to him as well. In the photos
we see a man with short, dark brown hair, light skin,
(16:46):
and green eyes. Often Jose wears are closely trimmed beard
and a chain around his neck with a cross on it.
His siblings describe him as a jokester and something of
a ham.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
In the years he was living back in Mexico, Jose
tried to cross the border to get back into the
States twice. Both times he was caught and deported. Then,
in May twenty fifteen, the day after his thirty first birthday,
he decided to try again.
Speaker 7 (17:09):
Jodo lotengo bim presente kiss thing.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
The first step was to take a plane to get
close to the border. Sin Verio gave Jose a lift
to the airport. It was the last time he saw
his son, and he remembers it very clearly.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
Laimbezol.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
He told Jose to go with God and with the Virgin,
and gave him a kiss on the forehead in Medico.
Speaker 7 (17:32):
Papa de jojo loo lo kiero moch.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I love you very much, dad, Jose told him, and
then with a hug and a kiss off he went.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
Josef Lutuelosillo in the north of Mexico. His family paid
for the services of a coyote, as smugglers who guide
immigrants across the border are known, and the smuggler took
him to a safe house in Awaprieta, just across the
border from Arizona. There they'd wait for the right moment
to walk through the desert into the US.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
And just to zoom out for a second. Crossing the
border is a really, really dangerous thing to do. The
coyote's job is to get their people across, but there
are all kinds of things that can happen. There's the
natural dangers of dehydration and getting lost in the desert.
And then there's the human dangers cartels and gang members
who seek to rip off migrants, corrupt cops and border towns,
(18:22):
bad coyotes who double cross the people they're ferrying across.
For female migrants, sexual assaults are really common. Sometimes everything
works out fine, other times it doesn't.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
And in Jose's case, something goes very wrong at the border,
and this is where things start to get confusing to
piece together.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
The day after he leaves home Friday night, around midnight, Rosario,
that's Jose's sister in Las Vegas, she gets a call
from her brother.
Speaker 9 (18:49):
Jaius this dormis Aye one.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Pa Bossett tells her they're about to cross the border
earlier than expected. She says, great, call me when you
get to Phoenix and we'll come pick you up.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Then over the phone, she hears an argument between two
people yelling as to those persona.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
Somebody mentions a commandante a commander, but she can't really
hear what they're saying.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
The call drops. Five minutes later, Jose calls her back
and now he's running and saying the smuggler wanted to
kill him, and he sounds really panicked. She's never heard
him sound so scared in her life. While they're on
the phone, he flags down a car and offers the
driver money to take him to the official border checkpoint. There.
(19:38):
While he's still on the phone with his sister, he
runs up to US border patrol and hands himself in,
saying he needs protection.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
So you felt like he was going to be safe
because he was in American agent's hands.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That was my first thing.
Speaker 8 (19:54):
He was in good hands. Looks after that, we can
get a lawyer, do something, take him to co or
whatever we can do for him.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
In the morning, their mom in Mexico gets a call
from the smuggler with a different story. He tells her
that Jose disappeared. He said he was going out to
the store to get some juice and never came back.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Whatever happened, Jose ends up in US custody near the border.
We know that much. Then two days later, on Monday morning,
Rosario gets another call from her brother. He tells her
he's been taken to the Elloyd Detention Center a few
hours north in Arizona.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
When he calls you, what did he sound like, blas,
she says, he sounded excited to be in the US,
but was anxious to get out of detention. She tells
him be patient. We're going to find a lawyer and
we're going to get you out.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Over the next two days, Gabrielle and Rosadio call the
detention center several times, hoping to check up on their brother,
but they're never able to speak with him. They're told
that they have to first put money on an account
for him, then wait a while, and then Jose can
call them.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
What they're not told is that he was acting bizarre,
or that he was seen by a psychiatrist, or that
he was put on suicide watch.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
According to the accounts of other detainees, Jose at this
point is desperate to talk to his family. At the
same time, all his family wants to do is to
talk to him, but it doesn't happen.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
The last time his siblings try to call is on Wednesday.
The same afternoon, Jose dies.
Speaker 8 (21:21):
Right after five and I call the a detention center
asking for my brother, and the guy goes like, oh,
hold on, you can't talk to him right now. You
got a comeback tomorrow between seventy three. The next morning,
chi Herakal from the Mexican consul, saying that they found
my brother dead in he's ill.
Speaker 5 (21:46):
In shock, Gabrielle and Rosadio drives straight from Las Vegas
to Tucson, where Jose's body is being held. They retrieve
it and hold awake in a local funeral home.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Seeing her brother lying in the coffin, Rosadio was overcome,
She says. She leaned over the casket and spoke to him.
What did they do to you?
Speaker 7 (22:03):
She said, already?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Why didn't you defend yourself? How come you didn't wait
for me? No, miss Pinasta, forgive me brother for having
failed you.
Speaker 10 (22:17):
Look at you in.
Speaker 11 (22:30):
Mano.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
After hearing the story from the family, we didn't know
what to think. On one hand, his behavior at the
border sounds erradic. You know, he's running, he's panicked, he's
yelling on the phone to his sister that the coyote
wants to kill him. And remember, according to the documents
reviewed by the medical Examiner, he was acting strangely in
the tension a few days later. So it's possible that
Jose de Jsus was having some kind of paranoid episode
(22:54):
at the border. But on the other hand, it's totally plausible,
given the realities of crossing the border, that somebody actually
was trying to kill him, So maybe he was acting
rationally and US authorities thought he was crazy when he
was really just scared.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
As for the events after he was in US custody,
the family has even less information. They just don't know
much about what went on inside the Eloid Detention Center
on the days leading up to his death.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
We need the truth.
Speaker 8 (23:22):
We need to see their recording tapes.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
That's what we want, the recording tapes. Skavil is talking
about surveillance footage. He knows the medical examiner watched is
video that could have major clues as to what happened
to Jose. But getting those tapes won't be so easy.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Technically, anybody can ask a government agency for things like
documents or videos, and the government is supposed to try
and fill those requests, and that's because of transparency laws.
One of those laws is called the Freedom of Information
Act or FOYA for sure.
Speaker 5 (23:54):
So in this case, we wrote up a few foyas.
We asked Eyes for all documents relating to Hose's case,
video of is last day and attention, a list of
staff working at Eloy at the time, and some other stuff.
And then we waited.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Because usually these public record requests take a long time to.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Fill, and sometimes the government ends up either denying these
requests or severely redacting what they give you, leaving reporters
and families with unanswered questions.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And the lack of transparency is especially a problem for
facilities that are run by private companies. You've probably heard
of the private prison industry. For decades, the government has
been contracting out correctional services, that is the work of
imprisoning people for criminal violations, to private companies, companies that
staff and build and operate prisons. That's also true for
(24:39):
immigrant attention, and they're the same companies doing both.
Speaker 5 (24:42):
So immigrant attention is like prison in a lot of ways.
When you arrive, your strip search, fingerprinted, given a uniform,
and taken to a cell. But unlike prisons, the people
inside are held because of immigration violations, which are not
criminal charges. They haven't been found guilty in a cour
room or been given a sentence. Here's Grace meng, a
(25:03):
senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Speaker 12 (25:05):
Because it's not like a criminal justice system in some ways,
it can be more traumatic, is indefinite, there's no sentence.
People have told me, if I knew when I was
getting out, that would be one thing, but I don't
know when I'm going to get out.
Speaker 5 (25:20):
For some detention last a couple of weeks, for others
it's months or even years.
Speaker 12 (25:25):
I'm at a mat a couple of weeks ago who
spent nine years and four months in immigration intension fighting
his case, and the psychological toll is enormous.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
And what makes this more challenging is having to navigate
this whole process without a lawyer.
Speaker 13 (25:40):
Unlike in the criminal context, an individual who's in our
custody is not entitled to free legal services.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
That's Liz City Opata. She's a high ranking official within
Ice cityopa Ata says that people who are in ice
custody have to either hire someone to represent them, find
a pro bono lawyer, or try to represent themselves.
Speaker 13 (26:01):
These are civil immigration proceedings, not criminal proceedings, and therefore
no constitutional right to council.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
So immigrant detainees don't have many of the same rights
as prisoners in the criminal system. That's maybe why so
many of them end up staying in detention longer than
they should.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
And at the time we originally produced this report, I
says over three hundred thousand people went through the detention
system yearly.
Speaker 13 (26:24):
It's a difficult thing to manage alone, and we depend
on vendors who can provide the services that we need
to accommodate all of those varying needs from the global
population which we hold in our custody.
Speaker 9 (26:35):
Our destination, the best full service adult correction system.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
Our vision is our motiva.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
This is sound from a promotional video for one of
those vendors, CCA, the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs
the Elloyd Detention Center.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
CCA, which has since changed its name to core Civic,
is one of the largest private prison corporations running detention
centers for ICE. The government spends somewhere between seventy and
one hundred and twenty dollars a night for every detaining
day hold. I think of.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Seventeen thousand employees.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
We combined the accountability of government with the efficiency of business.
Speaker 10 (27:10):
People in the detention centers. Shul have knew that ELOI
was the worst of the worst.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
This is Victoria Lopez. She's a lawyer for the ACOU
in Phoenix and works a lot with immigrants and detention
At ELOI.
Speaker 10 (27:24):
Constant complaints about medical care, mental health care being placed
in segregation without knowing why or knowing when you'd get out.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
We should mention that we requested an interview with CCA,
but we're denied that. Instead, CCA officials said that they
would respond to some questions in writing, so we sent
questions but got no response.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Despite its reputation, Eloy has passed all of ICE's compliance
tests that are supposed to make sure everything is going
well and that the detention center is meeting basic standards.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
Yet Eloy is also the detention center that has had
the most.
Speaker 10 (27:58):
Deaths in the middle of the desert in Arizona. It's
one of these places where you're just driving in the
desert and all of a sudden you see this massive
prison in the middle of the desert landscape.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Ten a few months after Jose's death, Marlon and I
paid a visit to the Eloy Detention Center to get
a sense of what it's like to be detained there.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
The actual town of Eloi is about an hour outside
of Phoenix, and basically it's a tiny company town for CCA.
There are three CIA prisons in Eloi in addition to
the detention center, including one that holds almost all of
the male prisoners from Hawaii. Yeah, if you're a man
convicted of a crime in Hawaii, you might get put
on a plane and flow into this little town in Arizona.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
We arrive at the Eloy Immigrant Detention Center, enter through
a large chain link gate, and walk into a building
where visitors are received.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
After Jose's death, reporters were asking to come in and
see what was going on, including us, and so Ice
arranged for us to take part in a press tour.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
A very tightly controlled press tour.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yes, the rules were strict. No talking with the tainies,
no photos of anyone above the waist, and no recording
or quoting the comments of any government or CCA employee.
Over the course of several hours, they lead us through
the space is typical of what you'd imagine in a
high security prison.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Drab, gray cement buildings two stories high and fencing and
razor wire everywhere, literally everywhere.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
They took us to the so called tanks where detainees live,
cement floor, the wreck.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yard, a couple of basketball nets.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
The chow hal mush, the commissaria.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
There's salt and pepper, McCormick hot taco seasoning.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And what was really eerie about being there was looking
at people's feet because everyone was wearing identical thick orange socks,
the same type Jose choked on.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
And what was more striking was something that happened in
the parking lot. We met a woman named Susie Morale.
She was there to pick up her elderly grandmother who
was inside the detention c age.
Speaker 11 (30:04):
Old my grandma, and she's diabetic, slightly going blindness. Why
they decided to let her go because they thought that
someone with in that high end age they shouldn't. She
shouldn't be here. It's just overwhelming. It's a place you
don't want to see your grandma in because you think
the worst. You think that she's behind bars when she's
(30:26):
never committed anything.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
And that's the thing that was most striking about being
in Eloy. For all intents and purposes, it's this intimidating prison.
Yet looking around, I was really aware that the people
I was seeing weren't violent criminals. I mean, yes, some
do have criminal records, there's no doubt about that, but
a lot of them don't. And so I couldn't help
but think about Jose, who didn't have a criminal record,
(30:49):
showed up at the border asking for help and ended
up here.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
After the tour, we were allowed to interview two detainees briefly.
They didn't witness Josse his death, so we didn't learn
much from them. But before we left, we passed them
a piece of paper with our phone numbers on it,
and we asked them, if you hear of anyone that
has any information about Jose, let us know.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
So the tour ends, we go back home to New York.
Months go by, and then one day I get this
text message. It was kind of a reporter's dream.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
It just said in Spanish, my name is Juan Castillo Peris.
I witnessed the death of Jose de Jesu's de Nis Sagon.
Please call me so.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Right away, Fernanda and I called him. Hello.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Coming up on Latino USA, we meet the man who
sent us that mysterious text message. Stay with uses, Welcome
(32:10):
back to this special edition of Latino USA. I'm Marieojosa
with producers Marlon Bishop and Fernando Chavari.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
When we left off, we had just gotten a text
message from an unknown number. It was a man named
Juan Castillo Peris, saying he had witnessed the death of
Jose de Jesus.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
So right away Fernanda and I call him hello. Castillo
One tells us he was in the medical unit recovering
from a broken leg in a room directly across from Jose.
He since has been deported back to Mexico. He says
he used to work as a police detective in Central
Mexico back in the day, and he kind of talks
(32:47):
like a no nonsense detective from an old movie.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
Kwan tells us that he was probably the last person
to ever speak with Jose. He says a few hours
before his death, Jose was escorted out of his locked
room and taken to the shower. That's when the two
of them briefly talked. Juan told Jose to cheer up
because he had heard Jose make comments about wanting to die,
so Juan told him to be careful with those thoughts,
(33:11):
that he was young and that life was worth living,
and he says.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Jose responded with a sort of don't worry, Everything's cool.
Juan says he was there when the guards noticed Jose
was inside his cell and not responding.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
He remembers hearing a guard call out Jose's name and
bang on his door during one of the checkups, and
after a few minutes, that guard called for help on
the radio. That's when Juan and the other detainees were
asked to go back in their cells.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Juan thinks that Jose should not have been taken off
suicide watch, and.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
If Jose had been monitored twenty four to seven, he says,
maybe he wouldn't have killed himself. And Juan tells us
something else that we hadn't heard yet, that the guards
responded too slowly, that they could have saved Jose.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Okay, so, so far in our reporting, we have a
witness that says Jose could have been saved if the
medical response was faster. We have detaining letters that claim
that Jose was heard screaming and suggests that maybe he
was mistreated inside the detention center. And we have the
phone calls Jose made to his sister in the desert
that paint a picture, an incomplete one, but a picture
of what happened at the border.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
But a question that still looms for us is what
was going on for him throughout all of this. If
Jose had no history of mental illness, as his family
has told us, how did he suddenly become suicidal? So
we decided to take a trip to Jose's hometown in Mexico,
where he was just seven days before he died. We
went in search of clues and we ended up finding one.
Speaker 11 (34:44):
Welcome to Manzanillo's Airport for your information Local time.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Jose's parents, Siberio and Elisa live on a property they've
managed for thirty years on a remote beach on Mexico's
west coast near Manzanillo. It's like a small motel with
a pool in the middle and the Pacific Ocean as
a backdropora Jose's parents take us to his bedroom. There
is an elliptical in the corner, a bed against the wall,
(35:09):
and a dresser, and everything is just as it was
the day Jose left.
Speaker 5 (35:16):
The only thing that's changed is now there's an altar
for Jose, where Silverio and Elsa come to pray, sometimes
with the help of a plastic electronic grocery.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Josse's eleven year old nephew, Pepito, also lives here, and
he says he used to spend a lot of time
with his uncle playing video games in this room.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
He thought of Jose as an older brother.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
He says his uncle was a little shy and would
spend a lot of time in his room, keeping to himself.
Speaker 5 (35:54):
And actually Pepito is the only one in the family
who says Jose wasn't this happy outgoing personally. Everyone else
told us he was. Pepito says he was sad sometimes
and that the only thing that seemed to cheer him
up was talking to his kids on facetimes Lue. We
(36:18):
follow the Nisagun family on a twenty minute drive to
a tiny cemetery with only a couple dozen other gravestones.
The sun is about to set, and shortly after we
get there there's a large group of vultures circling over us.
The family built a raised grave for Jose out of
(36:39):
cement and tile, the kind you see in rural Mexico.
They decorated it with a large cross held up by
wooden posts, but all of that was destroyed by the
most recent hurricane.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Standing over his grave, they refused to believe Jose could
have killed himself, both because the thought of their son
doing that is unbearable, and also because they're devout Catholics.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
Skins of.
Speaker 11 (37:02):
And Nadan.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
The biggest sin one can commit is suicide, Silverio says,
and there's no way my son could have done that.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
No no, no.
Speaker 8 (37:16):
Dress.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Before we leave, we ask if there's anyone else outside
of the family that we can talk to who knew Jose,
a doctor or maybe a priest, and.
Speaker 5 (37:24):
They give us a phone number for their family doctor.
So we call him and he says he actually treated
Jose just months before he died, and that he's willing
to talk to us about why Jose came to see him.
Speaker 14 (37:34):
So doctor Juan Manuel Aragon Morales her La Medicina.
Speaker 5 (37:42):
Doctor Juan Manuel Aragon Morales has been treating people in
this small town for forty one years, and in March
of twenty fifteen, he remembers getting a call from Jose's parents.
Speaker 9 (37:52):
Porce Andava Muitriste no.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
De Primum, Silverio and Elisa brought Jose to doctor Aragon.
They told him that they noticed Jose was sad, he
didn't want to do anything and seemed depressed.
Speaker 9 (38:07):
Percivo modo.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
The doctor asked Jose a few questions. He asked Jose
if he had trouble sleeping, and he said yes. He
asked if he had ever thought of ending his life,
and Jose told the doctor he.
Speaker 14 (38:20):
Had Cynthia and La Vida and the Sulta.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
According to doctor Aragon, Jose did not seem to be
suffering from clinical depression. Instead, he had what the doctor
called moderate situational depression. That's the sort of temporary depression
that you might feel when somebody dies or after the
end of a relationship. In this case, Jose was missing
his kids terribly.
Speaker 9 (38:45):
Hey, look as usio.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
The doctor told Jose to taken over the counter antidepressant
every night before going to bed.
Speaker 9 (38:52):
Said Yama Mirtasapina.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
About twenty days later, the doctor saw Jose again. By
then he looked much better. He was more active in
the media, seemed to be working. A month after that,
he saw him again and there was even more improvement.
Speaker 5 (39:04):
Doctor Adragon says that yes, Jose was emotionally more fragile
than someone who hadn't suffered from depression, but he did
not believe at the time that Jose was suicidal. He
told Jose to continue taking the antidepressants and wait to
get his papers sorted out before trying to cross the
US Mexico border to see his kids.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
That would be the last time they saw each other.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
We just left the doctor's office and we walked down
to a little restaurant.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
So I have to say that the first words out
of his mouth meybe caro fores they just I went cold.
His parents brought him here because he was.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Depressed, after telling us a hundred times that he was
never depressed.
Speaker 5 (40:01):
Part of what I'm thinking, and especially having grown up
in Mexico, where any kind of mental illness, any kind
of depression, it's not something that families talk about in Mexico.
There is a lot of shame that comes with admitting
to having any kind of problem like this. Yes, I'm
shocked because the parents kept saying over and over that
he didn't have any problems, But in some ways I'm
(40:22):
not surprised.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Yet they gave us the doctor's contact, knowing that the
doctor knew something. Maybe it's that they wanted us to know,
but they couldn't say the words themselves, almost because it's
so painful.
Speaker 5 (40:36):
It's our last day in Mexico, and when we get
back to our hotel, I check my email and there's
something from ICE. It says final response to Foyer request.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
This seems unusual because it's been only a month since
we sent our request on Jose's case, and these things
usually take a long time.
Speaker 5 (40:54):
We're hoping these are the documents we're requested, or maybe
even the surveillance footage that we asked for. It's neither.
It's just a letter, Dear miss Ichavadi.
Speaker 15 (41:03):
This is the final response to your Freedom of Information
Act request to your seersonnel, doctors, nurses, et cetera, who
were on duty on May twenty as twentytions for records
responsive to your request produced one Excel spreadsheet will be
withheld in its entirety pursuant you have the right to appeal.
Isis withholding determination and that is all we got, which
(41:24):
means we have been formally denied access to any video
that ever existed from the day of the death of
Jose the Jesus the Niece shallum.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
So we leave Mexico knowing more about who Jose was.
We know that he had felt depressed and that he
was taking antidepressants at the direction of his doctor.
Speaker 5 (41:53):
But we don't know when he stopped taking the antidepressants.
What we do know is that, according to the autopsy,
they were not in his system at the time he died.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
So this question comes up. If he was already emotionally unstable,
how did being detained affect his mental state.
Speaker 5 (42:08):
We leave Mexico still searching for some documentation of what
happened to Jose inside the detention center, answers that perhaps
could be in the reports and video that we were denied.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
So we come back to New York City feeling like
we're never going to get what we need.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Then a week later, for none of that, gets a call.
Speaker 5 (42:28):
It literally said on the caller id city of Eloi
all in caps. So I pick up the phone and
it's a woman that works for the local police department.
Now let's pause for a second. Remember how earlier in
the episode we talked about how we requested all this
information and documents from ICE. That wasn't the only place
where we went searching. And here's why. On the de
(42:48):
Jose died, the detention center had to call nine one one,
and in doing so, the local police department in paramedics
had to show up, leaving a paper trail of what happened. So,
a few weeks back, we had requested all the documents
regarding that incident from the small Eloy police department, and
that's what this call was about. They had the documents
ready to send via email, and it is forty eight
(43:11):
pages completely unredacted.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
And honestly, this was really unexpected. All of a sudden,
we had a much better picture of what happened the
day Jose died.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
The police department documents include first person narratives from guards
and medical staff who were there when Jose was found unresponsive.
Nobody said that when they walked in they saw a
sock in his mouth. They say, in fact, that he
was having problems breathing.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Said for he said, nobody reached into his mouth and
tried to help him.
Speaker 5 (43:39):
Right because nobody saw a sock. According to these reports,
we also learned that Jose was still alive when the
guards entered his cell. They walked into his cell with
a protective shield and handcuffed him before Jose received medical attention.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Even if that is procedure, to me, I mean that
tells me also some thing about the culture of a
detention center. I mean that is that is looking at
people as criminal threats.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
The documents reveal that on his first day at ELOI,
Jose was with the general population and at some point
guards say he was saying things like they're after me,
They're gonna kill me, the exact same things he had
said to his sister on the phone when he was
at the border.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
On the second day, there's an order from the psychiatrist
to put him on suicide watch, and that means he's
locked up by himself in a special cell, modified so
that there's nothing he can hurt himself with. The order
says he's not to have utensils, no betting, and only
a mattress on the floor. They take away his clothes
and issue him a smock that can't be torn to
create a news for example.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
And there's another order from the same doctor a day
later on the third day. This one removes Jose from
suicide watch and puts him on a fifteen minute watch.
He's still locked up by himself and not with the
general population, but they give him back his normal uniform,
including his socks, and they have a guard check on
him every fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Through the documents, we find out that at the five
point thirty check that evening, a guard found Jose lying
on his stomach, not moving in his cell. Less than
an hour later, he was pronounced dead.
Speaker 5 (45:19):
Another thing we find is that there was a female
guard who took a video. It's some video that lasts
two minutes and fifty three seconds, and it is a
video of basically the CPR that was being done on
him and the last moments of hose De Jesus's life
inside the cell.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
And the police department records say that a copy of
that video was taken to their evidence room along with
copies of the surveillance video.
Speaker 5 (45:45):
I requested that this morning and we could get it.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
We didn't know if getting copies of those videos would
actually be possible. The local police department in the city
of Eloy could deny our request.
Speaker 5 (45:58):
Fast forward three weeks and we get a manila envelope
in the mail with a CD So I've just ripped
through this envelope and we're going to see what is
in the CDC.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Is going to be intense to watch.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
I mean, this is it a handheld video taken by
a guard at the exact moment guards and medical staff
enter jose cell after they realize something is wrong. Oh
my god. All right, so the first thing we see
is actually just a stop frame of some feet like
looking like they're running.
Speaker 5 (46:34):
How long the video is? How long is it?
Speaker 7 (46:37):
Oh my god?
Speaker 5 (46:39):
This is going to be intense people.
Speaker 8 (46:41):
Okay, you.
Speaker 9 (47:03):
Next time.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
What happens in that video, how did the guards react?
We hear more about what ICE officials have to say
about the detention system, and a year after the death
of Hosse de Hissus, a report is released with details
about what happens to him from the moment he arrives
on the US border. The report helps answer some of
(47:26):
the most pressing questions about the strange death of Hosse Dejsus.
That's next time on Latino USA. This episode was produced
by Fernanda Charari and Marlon Bishop. It was mixed by
(47:48):
Cornelius mcmoilof original music for this episode was composed by
Noam Hassenfeld. This investigation was reported with assistance from The
Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering criminal justice special
thanks to the Denise Savun family. The Latino USA team
includes Victoria Estradra, Renaldo Leanos Junior, Andrea Lopez Ruzslo, Dori
(48:11):
mar Marquez, Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Nor Saudi, and Nancy Trujillo.
Panillei Ramidez is our co executive producer. Our director of
engineering is Stephanie Lebau. Our senior engineer is Julia Caruso.
Our marketing manager is Luis Luna. Our theme music was
composed by Zane Ruinos. I'm your host and executive producer
(48:32):
Mariao Josa. Join us again for our next episode, and
in the meantime, I'll see you on all of our
social media jaquerdre de bayas.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
My Latino USA is made possible in part by the
Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of
social change worldwide. The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation funding for Latino USA is coverage of a culture
Sure of Health is made possible in part by a
(49:02):
grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
This is Marlon Bishop co CEO at Futuro Media and
back in the day, one of the producers of the
immigration story we have for you next. Last week on
Latino USA, we brought you an important story about an
unprecedented crisis in Sasabe, a remote town on the Arizona
border with Mexico, where two wings of the Sina Loa
cartel battle over a crossing point to smuggle migrants into
(00:24):
the US. The violence has turned the small community into
a ghost town. This and the fact that through June
ten people have died in iced attention in fiscal year
twenty twenty four. That's double the number of deaths reported
in all of fiscal year twenty twenty three, and triple
the amount reported in all of fiscal year twenty twenty two.
(00:46):
So within that context, we felt that it was important
to bring to you again the strange death of Jose
de Jssus. It is a two part special that originally
aired in twenty sixteen about the conditions, especially involving mental health,
inside the immigration detention system. The story would go on
to earn Latino USA the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
(01:08):
Here is part one of the strange death of Jose
de Jessus.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Before we start, dear listener, a quick warning. This episode
describes suicide in graphic language. On May thirteenth, twenty fifteen,
Jose DeJesus de Nissagun had a birthday party. It was small,
just his parents and some family and friends. They celebrated
(01:34):
on the back patio of their modest home on an
isolated stretch of coast in Central Mexico. Jose Dejsus was
turning thirty one years old. They were celebrating a birthday,
but they were also saying goodbye. The day after the party,
Jose would take a plane and a bus to the
(01:55):
Mexican border and then attempt to cross the desert into
the United States. His goal was to reunite with his
three young children, who lived in Las Vegas with their mother.
Jose missed them terribly and for years he had dreamed
of being near them again. But just seven days after
his party, Jose was dead in a US immigration detention center.
(02:18):
It was a suicide, a suicide by asphyxiation, to be
more precise. During the autopsy, the medical examiner found lodged
deep in Jose's throat a bunched up orange sock. Jose
had been in the Elloyd Detention Center in Arizona for
(02:40):
just three days. He didn't have a history of mental illness,
according to his family, and he was coming to the
US with a purpose to be with his kids.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
So what happened?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Romedia and PRX It's Latino USA. I'm Marieno Rossac Today,
Episode one of a two part special investigation. We look
into one man's death and what it tells us about
the unseen world of immigrant detention in the United States.
(03:23):
Over the course of almost a year, from twenty fifteen
through twenty sixteen, producers Marlon Bishop, Fernando Charvari and I
reported on the circumstances around Jose de Jsus's unusual death,
and you'll be hearing the three of us narrating this story.
We took trips all over the country and in Mexico,
(03:44):
conducted dozens of interviews, and poured through government documents in
an attempt to understand just what happened to Jose Dejsus.
It was quite a different time in our country. President
Obama was still in the White House and there was
far less national media attention on immigration and the detention system.
(04:05):
But what we uncovered about how detention works and why
migrants are dying in detention is more relevant now than ever.
So we're going to bring back our two part radio
documentary aired in twenty sixteen. It's the story of the
life and death of one immigrant detainee, and we're asking
(04:26):
the questions, why did Jose Dejsues die in custody of
the United States in such a strange way and what
does his death tell us about conditions inside immigration detention facilities.
We first heard about this story in twenty fifteen while
(04:47):
Marlon and I were on a reporting trip in Phoenix, Arizona.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Head west on West Elm Street toward North Nineteenth Avenue,
then turn right onto a North nineteenth Avenue.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
It was the height of summer.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Is what is the temper you're reading right now on.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
It says one oh five on the car. If we're
to believe it, that's pretty high.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
We've been in touch with an immigrant advocacy group called
PINE and they invited us to their office.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
They invited us because something weird was going on and
it had to do with Jose.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
We started getting letters from the Eloid Detention Center, anonymous letters.
People are obviously scared.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
This is Francisca Barcas. She's the organizing director at Bwinde.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
It literally happened right after his death. Right after his
death was on May twentieth, and probably early June is
when we started getting letters and then we were like, okay,
something's gonna like something's happening.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Puente is one of the main groups in the area
that helps immigrants and detention get legal representation so people
on the inside not to contact them when something comes up.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
And for a little context, the people inside detention range
from those who were caught crossing the border recently to
people who have been living in the US for decades
and maybe their immigration status came up during a traffic
stop or a workplace. Right the people that are in
detention are either waiting to be deported or they're waiting
for a court date to find out if they can
(06:12):
stay one.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
They gets letters from the tainees all the time, but
they had never received so many letters before. Dozens. They
were filled with accounts of Jose's death.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Do you have the letters here?
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Let me look at my desk quickly.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
That's a lot of letters.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So this is May twenty six.
Speaker 6 (06:28):
Here, Hosa Sagon got thrown into a cell and a
building Bravo six hundred like an animal. They ripped his
clothes off, did not give him a mattress until around
ten pm. All he was asking was a phone call
to his family or lawyer, which never happened. He was ignored,
(06:49):
like if he wasn't even there. He was so stressed
and desperate at that point.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So he continued saying he was so streed and desperate
at that point that it pushed him to commit suicide.
I believe Jose Sai Wound's death could have been prevented,
just like other previous deaths that Alloyd Detention Center has had.
In other letters, several detainees wrote that they heard screaming
coming from hose cell and believed he was beaten up
(07:18):
by guards. One wrote that Jose was tasered in pepper sprayed,
but all of them suggested that he was mistreated in detention.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It's hard to know for sure which, if any, of
the accounts were first hand and which were rumors to
kind that fly through the detention center when big things happen,
but it was clear that detainees at Eloy were upset
and freaked out because nobody at the detention center was
telling them what was going on.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Then a week later, some detainees said they went on
a hunger strike to protest the conditions inside Eloy and
to protest Jose's death.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
All of it was a sign that people inside the
detention center wanted to be heard.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
These letters get opened before we get them, and so
that's how we know there's a serious case here to investigate.
If people are both putting themselves out there and putting
their bodies on the line through a hunger strike, so
I want there to be a real investigation.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
People outside the detention center were also talking about the
unusual way that Jose had died. One Democratic Congressman from
Tucson even called for the US Department of Justice to
investigate his death while activists protested.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Recent detainees deaths.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
The men started the hunger strike this morning.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Then protesters say they were kept outside in the heat
by doors.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
As retaliation, But at the time ICE officials weren't saying much.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It's the government
agency that is charged with detaining and deporting immigrants. And
remember that acronym because it's going to come up a
lot during this episode.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
All they had said was that a man died inside
the Eloid Detention Center because of unknown causes. Then weeks later,
ICE released another statement saying that a medical examiner ruled
Jose's death a suicide.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Hither for an interview with doctor Tess. A month and
a half after Hose's death, I visited doctor Gregory Hess.
He's the medical examiner from Pema County, Arizona, who performed
the autopsy and reviewed Hosse's file from when he was detained.
Speaker 7 (09:19):
He was having what they were describing as delusional thoughts,
so he was trying to bang his head against the wall,
saying people were going to kill him. I'm just kind
of bizarre behavior. And he was seen by a psychologist
at that facility who put him on a constant suicide
watch for about a day.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
This was just the second day Josse was in the
detention center. He was locked up in a room alone
with a guard watching him at all times. On the
third day, the day he died, he was no longer
on suicide watch and was under far less supervision.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
Doctor Hes, by the way, works for the county. He's
not connected to ICE or to the private company that
runs the Eloid Detention Center.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Doctor Hess found a few things during the autopsy. He
discovered what the autopsy report called, quote blunt force injuries
to the head. He says he doesn't know when those injuries.
Speaker 7 (10:09):
Occurred, whether it was during his episode of bizarre behavior,
whether or not he was being restrained by corrections officials,
whether or not he received that somehow crossing the border
in the first place.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
But he says it wasn't serious, essentially a bruise or
a bump.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
On the head.
Speaker 7 (10:23):
It doesn't have anything to do with his death.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
It's worth noting that doctor Hes also read in Jose's
file that he was quote restrained by guards, which could
mean anything from being handcuffed to a more intense physical encounter.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Doctor has also found a white plastic candle about four
inches long inside Hosse's stomach. It appeared to be part
of a toothbrush.
Speaker 7 (10:46):
In my opinion, he probably consumed that toothbrush prior to
the sock, with the thought that if I consume this
it will it may kill me.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Last, and most importantly, he found the sock, a bright orange,
knee high thick prison sock.
Speaker 7 (11:01):
The sock was bunched up, but essentially it was molded
into the esophagus, so imagine he had to work to
make that happen a little bit. So essentially that sock
was was distending and impacted within the esophagus. The most
of the sock was including the entrance to the trichea,
so basically what that is is choking.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
The autopsy found there were no drugs in Hose's system,
nor any other medical problems that could have led to
his death, and so after looking at the evidence, doctor
Hess certified Jose's death a suicide by asphyxiation with a sock.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
And for many people we spoke to in the immigrant
advocacy community and detainees at ELOI, the sock was suspicious
a part of the story that didn't add up to
them because it's hard to imagine that anybody could die
that way.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Doctor Hess has never seen a case like this before,
but he cautioned against thinking it's impossible.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
It's difficult to look at people that commit suicide after
the fact and then rationalize actions. Why would they not
hang themselves and stead, you know, I have no idea.
Oftentimes suicides are people that aren't thinking clearly because they
have depression, they have psychiatric illness. They may be on substances.
I have no idea what this individual's past medical history was,
(12:21):
but I'm sure being apprehended and thrown into a facility
can be stressing, and maybe that's the way he reacted.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Is there any medical possibility that this man was murdered. No,
So what we know so far is that the medical
evidence shows that Hose the Hissus died by suicide after
(12:50):
choking on a knisak. But we still had other questions.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
How could this happen just three days after entering the
eloid Detention Center and who Jose the Hissus. To answer
that question, we had to meet the Denis Sagoon family.
Stay with us Notes, Welcome back to this special edition
(13:20):
of Latino USA. I'm Marie no Josa with producers Fernando
Charari and Marlon Bishop.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Okay, I'm recording. Where are we?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
We are in a cab now. We just landed in
Las Vegas and we're on our way to meet the
family of Jose de Jesus Sagoon that has agreed to
speak with us. And for me, honestly, it's a very
it's a it's an uncomfortable feeling. I am it's going
to be really hard.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I mean, I would hate to think, like if my son,
if something happened to my son in a foreign country,
that then I'd have to come back and try to
piece it together. About a month and a half after
the death of Osse the Hissus, we visited Las Vegas,
where his brother and sister live. His parents, who live
in Mexico, had flown up to Vegas to spend some
time with the family after the tragedy.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Our taxi pulls into a brand new looking suburban subdivision
and we get out at a handsome ranch house. You ready.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Jose's brother Gabriel opens the door and invites us in.
The family is seated at the kitchen table eating takeout.
We're greeted by Jose's father, Silberio, a man with sad
eyes and a big silver mustache.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
He says the pain they're feeling is deep, and over
the course of several hours, the family shares Jose's story.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Silberio and his wife Elisa, manage a small hotel on
the coast of Mexico, and their kids grew up on
the grounds. Jose was the second oldest. His nickname in
the family was Pecoso because of his freckles.
Speaker 8 (15:00):
He was the kind of brother that he used to
protect us from everything or anything.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
Gabriel is five years younger than Jose, and he looked
up to his big brother.
Speaker 8 (15:12):
He was kind, he have a good heart, and he
was brave on his life.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
When Jose de Hesus turned nineteen, like many young men
from his little town, he decided to try his luck
in the US. He came without papers and found work
as a plumber here in Las Vegas.
Speaker 8 (15:27):
He wish he can be born in this country. He
always used to say that I want to be American.
I don't know why I am not born in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Josse met a woman here and they had three kids.
But seven years after Jose arrived in the States, his father,
sid Video, became very sick with a heart condition. They
weren't sure if he would live much longer, and Jose
returned to Mexico so they could spend some time together.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
His girlfriend and kids came with him to Mexico. There
they got married, but the relationship soured quickly, so his
wife and kids went back to Vegas. They had legal
status in the US, but Jose.
Speaker 8 (16:00):
Did it my brother was stuck in Mexico, always trying
to come back.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
To fly for his kids.
Speaker 8 (16:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
For five years, Jose lived with his parents in Mexico,
doing odd jobs to help his dad and dreaming of
reuniting with his kids. By that point, his brother and
sister had moved to the US. He missed them a
lot too. The siblings stayed in touch on Facebook sharing photos.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
These are great photographs. So this is a photograph of
Josejess who's doing a headstand on the with the ocean
right next to him, and his little boy doing a
headstand right next to him as well. In the photos
we see a man with short, dark brown hair, light skin,
(16:46):
and green eyes. Often Jose wears are closely trimmed beard
and a chain around his neck with a cross on it.
His siblings describe him as a jokester and something of
a ham.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
In the years he was living back in Mexico, Jose
tried to cross the border to get back into the
States twice. Both times he was caught and deported. Then,
in May twenty fifteen, the day after his thirty first birthday,
he decided to try again.
Speaker 7 (17:09):
Jodo lotengo bim presente kiss thing.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
The first step was to take a plane to get
close to the border. Sin Verio gave Jose a lift
to the airport. It was the last time he saw
his son, and he remembers it very clearly.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
Laimbezol.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
He told Jose to go with God and with the Virgin,
and gave him a kiss on the forehead in Medico.
Speaker 7 (17:32):
Papa de jojo loo lo kiero moch.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I love you very much, dad, Jose told him, and
then with a hug and a kiss off he went.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
Josef Lutuelosillo in the north of Mexico. His family paid
for the services of a coyote, as smugglers who guide
immigrants across the border are known, and the smuggler took
him to a safe house in Awaprieta, just across the
border from Arizona. There they'd wait for the right moment
to walk through the desert into the US.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
And just to zoom out for a second. Crossing the
border is a really, really dangerous thing to do. The
coyote's job is to get their people across, but there
are all kinds of things that can happen. There's the
natural dangers of dehydration and getting lost in the desert.
And then there's the human dangers cartels and gang members
who seek to rip off migrants, corrupt cops and border towns,
(18:22):
bad coyotes who double cross the people they're ferrying across.
For female migrants, sexual assaults are really common. Sometimes everything
works out fine, other times it doesn't.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
And in Jose's case, something goes very wrong at the border,
and this is where things start to get confusing to
piece together.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
The day after he leaves home Friday night, around midnight, Rosario,
that's Jose's sister in Las Vegas, she gets a call
from her brother.
Speaker 9 (18:49):
Jaius this dormis Aye one.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Pa Bossett tells her they're about to cross the border
earlier than expected. She says, great, call me when you
get to Phoenix and we'll come pick you up.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Then over the phone, she hears an argument between two
people yelling as to those persona.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
Somebody mentions a commandante a commander, but she can't really
hear what they're saying.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
The call drops. Five minutes later, Jose calls her back
and now he's running and saying the smuggler wanted to
kill him, and he sounds really panicked. She's never heard
him sound so scared in her life. While they're on
the phone, he flags down a car and offers the
driver money to take him to the official border checkpoint. There.
(19:38):
While he's still on the phone with his sister, he
runs up to US border patrol and hands himself in,
saying he needs protection.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
So you felt like he was going to be safe
because he was in American agent's hands.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That was my first thing.
Speaker 8 (19:54):
He was in good hands. Looks after that, we can
get a lawyer, do something, take him to co or
whatever we can do for him.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
In the morning, their mom in Mexico gets a call
from the smuggler with a different story. He tells her
that Jose disappeared. He said he was going out to
the store to get some juice and never came back.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Whatever happened, Jose ends up in US custody near the border.
We know that much. Then two days later, on Monday morning,
Rosario gets another call from her brother. He tells her
he's been taken to the Elloyd Detention Center a few
hours north in Arizona.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
When he calls you, what did he sound like, blas,
she says, he sounded excited to be in the US,
but was anxious to get out of detention. She tells
him be patient. We're going to find a lawyer and
we're going to get you out.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Over the next two days, Gabrielle and Rosadio call the
detention center several times, hoping to check up on their brother,
but they're never able to speak with him. They're told
that they have to first put money on an account
for him, then wait a while, and then Jose can
call them.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
What they're not told is that he was acting bizarre,
or that he was seen by a psychiatrist, or that
he was put on suicide watch.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
According to the accounts of other detainees, Jose at this
point is desperate to talk to his family. At the
same time, all his family wants to do is to
talk to him, but it doesn't happen.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
The last time his siblings try to call is on Wednesday.
The same afternoon, Jose dies.
Speaker 8 (21:21):
Right after five and I call the a detention center
asking for my brother, and the guy goes like, oh,
hold on, you can't talk to him right now. You
got a comeback tomorrow between seventy three. The next morning,
chi Herakal from the Mexican consul, saying that they found
my brother dead in he's ill.
Speaker 5 (21:46):
In shock, Gabrielle and Rosadio drives straight from Las Vegas
to Tucson, where Jose's body is being held. They retrieve
it and hold awake in a local funeral home.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Seeing her brother lying in the coffin, Rosadio was overcome,
She says. She leaned over the casket and spoke to him.
What did they do to you?
Speaker 7 (22:03):
She said, already?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Why didn't you defend yourself? How come you didn't wait
for me? No, miss Pinasta, forgive me brother for having
failed you.
Speaker 10 (22:17):
Look at you in.
Speaker 11 (22:30):
Mano.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
After hearing the story from the family, we didn't know
what to think. On one hand, his behavior at the
border sounds erradic. You know, he's running, he's panicked, he's
yelling on the phone to his sister that the coyote
wants to kill him. And remember, according to the documents
reviewed by the medical Examiner, he was acting strangely in
the tension a few days later. So it's possible that
Jose de Jsus was having some kind of paranoid episode
(22:54):
at the border. But on the other hand, it's totally plausible,
given the realities of crossing the border, that somebody actually
was trying to kill him, So maybe he was acting
rationally and US authorities thought he was crazy when he
was really just scared.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
As for the events after he was in US custody,
the family has even less information. They just don't know
much about what went on inside the Eloid Detention Center
on the days leading up to his death.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
We need the truth.
Speaker 8 (23:22):
We need to see their recording tapes.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
That's what we want, the recording tapes. Skavil is talking
about surveillance footage. He knows the medical examiner watched is
video that could have major clues as to what happened
to Jose. But getting those tapes won't be so easy.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Technically, anybody can ask a government agency for things like
documents or videos, and the government is supposed to try
and fill those requests, and that's because of transparency laws.
One of those laws is called the Freedom of Information
Act or FOYA for sure.
Speaker 5 (23:54):
So in this case, we wrote up a few foyas.
We asked Eyes for all documents relating to Hose's case,
video of is last day and attention, a list of
staff working at Eloy at the time, and some other stuff.
And then we waited.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Because usually these public record requests take a long time to.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Fill, and sometimes the government ends up either denying these
requests or severely redacting what they give you, leaving reporters
and families with unanswered questions.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And the lack of transparency is especially a problem for
facilities that are run by private companies. You've probably heard
of the private prison industry. For decades, the government has
been contracting out correctional services, that is the work of
imprisoning people for criminal violations, to private companies, companies that
staff and build and operate prisons. That's also true for
(24:39):
immigrant attention, and they're the same companies doing both.
Speaker 5 (24:42):
So immigrant attention is like prison in a lot of ways.
When you arrive, your strip search, fingerprinted, given a uniform,
and taken to a cell. But unlike prisons, the people
inside are held because of immigration violations, which are not
criminal charges. They haven't been found guilty in a cour
room or been given a sentence. Here's Grace meng, a
(25:03):
senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Speaker 12 (25:05):
Because it's not like a criminal justice system in some ways,
it can be more traumatic, is indefinite, there's no sentence.
People have told me, if I knew when I was
getting out, that would be one thing, but I don't
know when I'm going to get out.
Speaker 5 (25:20):
For some detention last a couple of weeks, for others
it's months or even years.
Speaker 12 (25:25):
I'm at a mat a couple of weeks ago who
spent nine years and four months in immigration intension fighting
his case, and the psychological toll is enormous.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
And what makes this more challenging is having to navigate
this whole process without a lawyer.
Speaker 13 (25:40):
Unlike in the criminal context, an individual who's in our
custody is not entitled to free legal services.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
That's Liz City Opata. She's a high ranking official within
Ice cityopa Ata says that people who are in ice
custody have to either hire someone to represent them, find
a pro bono lawyer, or try to represent themselves.
Speaker 13 (26:01):
These are civil immigration proceedings, not criminal proceedings, and therefore
no constitutional right to council.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
So immigrant detainees don't have many of the same rights
as prisoners in the criminal system. That's maybe why so
many of them end up staying in detention longer than
they should.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
And at the time we originally produced this report, I
says over three hundred thousand people went through the detention
system yearly.
Speaker 13 (26:24):
It's a difficult thing to manage alone, and we depend
on vendors who can provide the services that we need
to accommodate all of those varying needs from the global
population which we hold in our custody.
Speaker 9 (26:35):
Our destination, the best full service adult correction system.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
Our vision is our motiva.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
This is sound from a promotional video for one of
those vendors, CCA, the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs
the Elloyd Detention Center.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
CCA, which has since changed its name to core Civic,
is one of the largest private prison corporations running detention
centers for ICE. The government spends somewhere between seventy and
one hundred and twenty dollars a night for every detaining
day hold. I think of.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Seventeen thousand employees.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
We combined the accountability of government with the efficiency of business.
Speaker 10 (27:10):
People in the detention centers. Shul have knew that ELOI
was the worst of the worst.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
This is Victoria Lopez. She's a lawyer for the ACOU
in Phoenix and works a lot with immigrants and detention
At ELOI.
Speaker 10 (27:24):
Constant complaints about medical care, mental health care being placed
in segregation without knowing why or knowing when you'd get out.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
We should mention that we requested an interview with CCA,
but we're denied that. Instead, CCA officials said that they
would respond to some questions in writing, so we sent
questions but got no response.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Despite its reputation, Eloy has passed all of ICE's compliance
tests that are supposed to make sure everything is going
well and that the detention center is meeting basic standards.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
Yet Eloy is also the detention center that has had
the most.
Speaker 10 (27:58):
Deaths in the middle of the desert in Arizona. It's
one of these places where you're just driving in the
desert and all of a sudden you see this massive
prison in the middle of the desert landscape.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Ten a few months after Jose's death, Marlon and I
paid a visit to the Eloy Detention Center to get
a sense of what it's like to be detained there.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
The actual town of Eloi is about an hour outside
of Phoenix, and basically it's a tiny company town for CCA.
There are three CIA prisons in Eloi in addition to
the detention center, including one that holds almost all of
the male prisoners from Hawaii. Yeah, if you're a man
convicted of a crime in Hawaii, you might get put
on a plane and flow into this little town in Arizona.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
We arrive at the Eloy Immigrant Detention Center, enter through
a large chain link gate, and walk into a building
where visitors are received.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
After Jose's death, reporters were asking to come in and
see what was going on, including us, and so Ice
arranged for us to take part in a press tour.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
A very tightly controlled press tour.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yes, the rules were strict. No talking with the tainies,
no photos of anyone above the waist, and no recording
or quoting the comments of any government or CCA employee.
Over the course of several hours, they lead us through
the space is typical of what you'd imagine in a
high security prison.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Drab, gray cement buildings two stories high and fencing and
razor wire everywhere, literally everywhere.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
They took us to the so called tanks where detainees live,
cement floor, the wreck.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yard, a couple of basketball nets.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
The chow hal mush, the commissaria.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
There's salt and pepper, McCormick hot taco seasoning.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And what was really eerie about being there was looking
at people's feet because everyone was wearing identical thick orange socks,
the same type Jose choked on.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
And what was more striking was something that happened in
the parking lot. We met a woman named Susie Morale.
She was there to pick up her elderly grandmother who
was inside the detention c age.
Speaker 11 (30:04):
Old my grandma, and she's diabetic, slightly going blindness. Why
they decided to let her go because they thought that
someone with in that high end age they shouldn't. She
shouldn't be here. It's just overwhelming. It's a place you
don't want to see your grandma in because you think
the worst. You think that she's behind bars when she's
(30:26):
never committed anything.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
And that's the thing that was most striking about being
in Eloy. For all intents and purposes, it's this intimidating prison.
Yet looking around, I was really aware that the people
I was seeing weren't violent criminals. I mean, yes, some
do have criminal records, there's no doubt about that, but
a lot of them don't. And so I couldn't help
but think about Jose, who didn't have a criminal record,
(30:49):
showed up at the border asking for help and ended
up here.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
After the tour, we were allowed to interview two detainees briefly.
They didn't witness Josse his death, so we didn't learn
much from them. But before we left, we passed them
a piece of paper with our phone numbers on it,
and we asked them, if you hear of anyone that
has any information about Jose, let us know.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
So the tour ends, we go back home to New York.
Months go by, and then one day I get this
text message. It was kind of a reporter's dream.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
It just said in Spanish, my name is Juan Castillo Peris.
I witnessed the death of Jose de Jesu's de Nis Sagon.
Please call me so.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Right away, Fernanda and I called him. Hello.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Coming up on Latino USA, we meet the man who
sent us that mysterious text message. Stay with uses, Welcome
(32:10):
back to this special edition of Latino USA. I'm Marieojosa
with producers Marlon Bishop and Fernando Chavari.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
When we left off, we had just gotten a text
message from an unknown number. It was a man named
Juan Castillo Peris, saying he had witnessed the death of
Jose de Jesus.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
So right away Fernanda and I call him hello. Castillo
One tells us he was in the medical unit recovering
from a broken leg in a room directly across from Jose.
He since has been deported back to Mexico. He says
he used to work as a police detective in Central
Mexico back in the day, and he kind of talks
(32:47):
like a no nonsense detective from an old movie.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
Kwan tells us that he was probably the last person
to ever speak with Jose. He says a few hours
before his death, Jose was escorted out of his locked
room and taken to the shower. That's when the two
of them briefly talked. Juan told Jose to cheer up
because he had heard Jose make comments about wanting to die,
so Juan told him to be careful with those thoughts,
(33:11):
that he was young and that life was worth living,
and he says.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Jose responded with a sort of don't worry, Everything's cool.
Juan says he was there when the guards noticed Jose
was inside his cell and not responding.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
He remembers hearing a guard call out Jose's name and
bang on his door during one of the checkups, and
after a few minutes, that guard called for help on
the radio. That's when Juan and the other detainees were
asked to go back in their cells.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Juan thinks that Jose should not have been taken off
suicide watch, and.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
If Jose had been monitored twenty four to seven, he says,
maybe he wouldn't have killed himself. And Juan tells us
something else that we hadn't heard yet, that the guards
responded too slowly, that they could have saved Jose.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Okay, so, so far in our reporting, we have a
witness that says Jose could have been saved if the
medical response was faster. We have detaining letters that claim
that Jose was heard screaming and suggests that maybe he
was mistreated inside the detention center. And we have the
phone calls Jose made to his sister in the desert
that paint a picture, an incomplete one, but a picture
of what happened at the border.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
But a question that still looms for us is what
was going on for him throughout all of this. If
Jose had no history of mental illness, as his family
has told us, how did he suddenly become suicidal? So
we decided to take a trip to Jose's hometown in Mexico,
where he was just seven days before he died. We
went in search of clues and we ended up finding one.
Speaker 11 (34:44):
Welcome to Manzanillo's Airport for your information Local time.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Jose's parents, Siberio and Elisa live on a property they've
managed for thirty years on a remote beach on Mexico's
west coast near Manzanillo. It's like a small motel with
a pool in the middle and the Pacific Ocean as
a backdropora Jose's parents take us to his bedroom. There
is an elliptical in the corner, a bed against the wall,
(35:09):
and a dresser, and everything is just as it was
the day Jose left.
Speaker 5 (35:16):
The only thing that's changed is now there's an altar
for Jose, where Silverio and Elsa come to pray, sometimes
with the help of a plastic electronic grocery.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Josse's eleven year old nephew, Pepito, also lives here, and
he says he used to spend a lot of time
with his uncle playing video games in this room.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
He thought of Jose as an older brother.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
He says his uncle was a little shy and would
spend a lot of time in his room, keeping to himself.
Speaker 5 (35:54):
And actually Pepito is the only one in the family
who says Jose wasn't this happy outgoing personally. Everyone else
told us he was. Pepito says he was sad sometimes
and that the only thing that seemed to cheer him
up was talking to his kids on facetimes Lue. We
(36:18):
follow the Nisagun family on a twenty minute drive to
a tiny cemetery with only a couple dozen other gravestones.
The sun is about to set, and shortly after we
get there there's a large group of vultures circling over us.
The family built a raised grave for Jose out of
(36:39):
cement and tile, the kind you see in rural Mexico.
They decorated it with a large cross held up by
wooden posts, but all of that was destroyed by the
most recent hurricane.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Standing over his grave, they refused to believe Jose could
have killed himself, both because the thought of their son
doing that is unbearable, and also because they're devout Catholics.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
Skins of.
Speaker 11 (37:02):
And Nadan.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
The biggest sin one can commit is suicide, Silverio says,
and there's no way my son could have done that.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
No no, no.
Speaker 8 (37:16):
Dress.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Before we leave, we ask if there's anyone else outside
of the family that we can talk to who knew Jose,
a doctor or maybe a priest, and.
Speaker 5 (37:24):
They give us a phone number for their family doctor.
So we call him and he says he actually treated
Jose just months before he died, and that he's willing
to talk to us about why Jose came to see him.
Speaker 14 (37:34):
So doctor Juan Manuel Aragon Morales her La Medicina.
Speaker 5 (37:42):
Doctor Juan Manuel Aragon Morales has been treating people in
this small town for forty one years, and in March
of twenty fifteen, he remembers getting a call from Jose's parents.
Speaker 9 (37:52):
Porce Andava Muitriste no.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
De Primum, Silverio and Elisa brought Jose to doctor Aragon.
They told him that they noticed Jose was sad, he
didn't want to do anything and seemed depressed.
Speaker 9 (38:07):
Percivo modo.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
The doctor asked Jose a few questions. He asked Jose
if he had trouble sleeping, and he said yes. He
asked if he had ever thought of ending his life,
and Jose told the doctor he.
Speaker 14 (38:20):
Had Cynthia and La Vida and the Sulta.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
According to doctor Aragon, Jose did not seem to be
suffering from clinical depression. Instead, he had what the doctor
called moderate situational depression. That's the sort of temporary depression
that you might feel when somebody dies or after the
end of a relationship. In this case, Jose was missing
his kids terribly.
Speaker 9 (38:45):
Hey, look as usio.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
The doctor told Jose to taken over the counter antidepressant
every night before going to bed.
Speaker 9 (38:52):
Said Yama Mirtasapina.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
About twenty days later, the doctor saw Jose again. By
then he looked much better. He was more active in
the media, seemed to be working. A month after that,
he saw him again and there was even more improvement.
Speaker 5 (39:04):
Doctor Adragon says that yes, Jose was emotionally more fragile
than someone who hadn't suffered from depression, but he did
not believe at the time that Jose was suicidal. He
told Jose to continue taking the antidepressants and wait to
get his papers sorted out before trying to cross the
US Mexico border to see his kids.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
That would be the last time they saw each other.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
We just left the doctor's office and we walked down
to a little restaurant.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
So I have to say that the first words out
of his mouth meybe caro fores they just I went cold.
His parents brought him here because he was.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Depressed, after telling us a hundred times that he was
never depressed.
Speaker 5 (40:01):
Part of what I'm thinking, and especially having grown up
in Mexico, where any kind of mental illness, any kind
of depression, it's not something that families talk about in Mexico.
There is a lot of shame that comes with admitting
to having any kind of problem like this. Yes, I'm
shocked because the parents kept saying over and over that
he didn't have any problems, But in some ways I'm
(40:22):
not surprised.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Yet they gave us the doctor's contact, knowing that the
doctor knew something. Maybe it's that they wanted us to know,
but they couldn't say the words themselves, almost because it's
so painful.
Speaker 5 (40:36):
It's our last day in Mexico, and when we get
back to our hotel, I check my email and there's
something from ICE. It says final response to Foyer request.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
This seems unusual because it's been only a month since
we sent our request on Jose's case, and these things
usually take a long time.
Speaker 5 (40:54):
We're hoping these are the documents we're requested, or maybe
even the surveillance footage that we asked for. It's neither.
It's just a letter, Dear miss Ichavadi.
Speaker 15 (41:03):
This is the final response to your Freedom of Information
Act request to your seersonnel, doctors, nurses, et cetera, who
were on duty on May twenty as twentytions for records
responsive to your request produced one Excel spreadsheet will be
withheld in its entirety pursuant you have the right to appeal.
Isis withholding determination and that is all we got, which
(41:24):
means we have been formally denied access to any video
that ever existed from the day of the death of
Jose the Jesus the Niece shallum.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
So we leave Mexico knowing more about who Jose was.
We know that he had felt depressed and that he
was taking antidepressants at the direction of his doctor.
Speaker 5 (41:53):
But we don't know when he stopped taking the antidepressants.
What we do know is that, according to the autopsy,
they were not in his system at the time he died.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
So this question comes up. If he was already emotionally unstable,
how did being detained affect his mental state.
Speaker 5 (42:08):
We leave Mexico still searching for some documentation of what
happened to Jose inside the detention center, answers that perhaps
could be in the reports and video that we were denied.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
So we come back to New York City feeling like
we're never going to get what we need.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Then a week later, for none of that, gets a call.
Speaker 5 (42:28):
It literally said on the caller id city of Eloi
all in caps. So I pick up the phone and
it's a woman that works for the local police department.
Now let's pause for a second. Remember how earlier in
the episode we talked about how we requested all this
information and documents from ICE. That wasn't the only place
where we went searching. And here's why. On the de
(42:48):
Jose died, the detention center had to call nine one one,
and in doing so, the local police department in paramedics
had to show up, leaving a paper trail of what happened. So,
a few weeks back, we had requested all the documents
regarding that incident from the small Eloy police department, and
that's what this call was about. They had the documents
ready to send via email, and it is forty eight
(43:11):
pages completely unredacted.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
And honestly, this was really unexpected. All of a sudden,
we had a much better picture of what happened the
day Jose died.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
The police department documents include first person narratives from guards
and medical staff who were there when Jose was found unresponsive.
Nobody said that when they walked in they saw a
sock in his mouth. They say, in fact, that he
was having problems breathing.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Said for he said, nobody reached into his mouth and
tried to help him.
Speaker 5 (43:39):
Right because nobody saw a sock. According to these reports,
we also learned that Jose was still alive when the
guards entered his cell. They walked into his cell with
a protective shield and handcuffed him before Jose received medical attention.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Even if that is procedure, to me, I mean that
tells me also some thing about the culture of a
detention center. I mean that is that is looking at
people as criminal threats.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
The documents reveal that on his first day at ELOI,
Jose was with the general population and at some point
guards say he was saying things like they're after me,
They're gonna kill me, the exact same things he had
said to his sister on the phone when he was
at the border.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
On the second day, there's an order from the psychiatrist
to put him on suicide watch, and that means he's
locked up by himself in a special cell, modified so
that there's nothing he can hurt himself with. The order
says he's not to have utensils, no betting, and only
a mattress on the floor. They take away his clothes
and issue him a smock that can't be torn to
create a news for example.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
And there's another order from the same doctor a day
later on the third day. This one removes Jose from
suicide watch and puts him on a fifteen minute watch.
He's still locked up by himself and not with the
general population, but they give him back his normal uniform,
including his socks, and they have a guard check on
him every fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Through the documents, we find out that at the five
point thirty check that evening, a guard found Jose lying
on his stomach, not moving in his cell. Less than
an hour later, he was pronounced dead.
Speaker 5 (45:19):
Another thing we find is that there was a female
guard who took a video. It's some video that lasts
two minutes and fifty three seconds, and it is a
video of basically the CPR that was being done on
him and the last moments of hose De Jesus's life
inside the cell.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
And the police department records say that a copy of
that video was taken to their evidence room along with
copies of the surveillance video.
Speaker 5 (45:45):
I requested that this morning and we could get it.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
We didn't know if getting copies of those videos would
actually be possible. The local police department in the city
of Eloy could deny our request.
Speaker 5 (45:58):
Fast forward three weeks and we get a manila envelope
in the mail with a CD So I've just ripped
through this envelope and we're going to see what is
in the CDC.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Is going to be intense to watch.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
I mean, this is it a handheld video taken by
a guard at the exact moment guards and medical staff
enter jose cell after they realize something is wrong. Oh
my god. All right, so the first thing we see
is actually just a stop frame of some feet like
looking like they're running.
Speaker 5 (46:34):
How long the video is? How long is it?
Speaker 7 (46:37):
Oh my god?
Speaker 5 (46:39):
This is going to be intense people.
Speaker 8 (46:41):
Okay, you.
Speaker 9 (47:03):
Next time.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
What happens in that video, how did the guards react?
We hear more about what ICE officials have to say
about the detention system, and a year after the death
of Hosse de Hissus, a report is released with details
about what happens to him from the moment he arrives
on the US border. The report helps answer some of
(47:26):
the most pressing questions about the strange death of Hosse Dejsus.
That's next time on Latino USA. This episode was produced
by Fernanda Charari and Marlon Bishop. It was mixed by
(47:48):
Cornelius mcmoilof original music for this episode was composed by
Noam Hassenfeld. This investigation was reported with assistance from The
Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering criminal justice special
thanks to the Denise Savun family. The Latino USA team
includes Victoria Estradra, Renaldo Leanos Junior, Andrea Lopez Ruzslo, Dori
(48:11):
mar Marquez, Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Nor Saudi, and Nancy Trujillo.
Panillei Ramidez is our co executive producer. Our director of
engineering is Stephanie Lebau. Our senior engineer is Julia Caruso.
Our marketing manager is Luis Luna. Our theme music was
composed by Zane Ruinos. I'm your host and executive producer
(48:32):
Mariao Josa. Join us again for our next episode, and
in the meantime, I'll see you on all of our
social media jaquerdre de bayas.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
My Latino USA is made possible in part by the
Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of
social change worldwide. The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation funding for Latino USA is coverage of a culture
Sure of Health is made possible in part by a
(49:02):
grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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